Setting up an external SCSI case for my x68k

[Neshek]

Hello! Noob is back

Ok, as i finally got a SCSI-1 cable i thought now is the time to give it the SCSI card a try.

HDD is an old Barracuda ST15150W tested on PC with a 68pin to 50pin adapter.

external case with 2 slots, HDD ID 0 and CDrom drive ID 1 Terminator jumper. Parity check off.

So i put the system disk in the x68000..

When running format.x both SCSI drives react physically, but checking for SCSI devices, the only device found is the CDrom drive. I've tried many things.. HDD only, with terminator and Parity on/off, several IDs... But it doesn't want to show up.

Is the hard drive just incompatible? Did i miss something in Switch.x or somewhere else? Could it be a conflict with SASI? Do i need to alter something on the master disk i have? I think it's standard one with SXSI directory booting SCSIIOCS, SASI, SCSI (Telling me no device attached to unit 3 i guess), well standard from masterdisk i've seen here i guess. ^^'

Thanks for your advices

[Neshek]

Update:
Hard Disk is now initializing... 
And it's taking forever

Finally found the issue. Looks like x68000 is not okay sharing the SCSI chain with the CDrom drive. I'll try another one later and investigate the issue. Then i changed J01 from "Terminate power to SCSI bus" (Not single-ended friendly) to "Terminate power to SCSI bus and drive"

By the way, i have a spare ST15150W (4gb should be more than enough for everyone. i'll put a 68<>50 adapter if i find one) so if anyone is interested, pay the shipping fee, promise me a beer if i visit your country someday and it's yours

Edit: This hard disk is double the height of standard drives. So i don't think it will fit any x68000 internally.

[Neshek]

Disk is stuck on initializing, prior to partitionning
During System Disk boot, SCSIHD.SYS reports this:
"利用出来る BPB read process がないので\SXSI\SCSIHD.SYSが登録できませんでした"

Which is more than cryptic to me... :/

[lydux]

Not sure... Seems a DOS BPB issue which is related to the access of a certain block within a drive partition.
This is a data structure internally used by human68k and more especially by the filesystem driver (FAT). One per partition exists and contains the necessary informations to convert a logical block address to a physical one.

Some explanations that came to me :
- The target hard drive geometry is incompatible with the filesystem driver. I mean, the human68k FAT expects 512 bytes per sector for an hard drive. Is that your case ?
- Trying to create a partition larger than 2GB. (Is it possible anyway ?)

Also, what's the SCSI host you use ? The official Sharp CZ-6BS1 ?

[SuperDeadite]

Normally max partition size is 1gb.  With the special driver installed, you can do 2gbs partitions.  And either way, you can only have 2 partitions per device.  Note you can make as many partitions as you want, but only 2 can be available at the same time.  If you attempt to have 3 or more available at once, HDD will be unreadable and you'll have boot from floppy.  If you want 4 active partitions, you must use 2 separate HDDs.

[Neshek]

- The target hard drive geometry is incompatible with the filesystem driver. I mean, the human68k FAT expects 512 bytes per sector for an hard drive. Is that your case ?

It is the case yes. 512 bytes per sector, 9 spare sectors per cylinder.
When checking SCSI devices, format.x sees the drive capacity correctly.

- Trying to create a partition larger than 2GB. (Is it possible anyway ?)

Stuck there in format.x: 裝置初期化
Initializing forever so i cannot partition anyway. But i planned to make 950mb partitions anyway. I've read about partition limitations on x68k

Also, what's the SCSI host you use ? The official Sharp CZ-6BS1 ?

It is the official Sharp SCSI yes.

I've also noticed another issue on the second disk drive. It reports a read/write error at the same sector position with any disk i insert, although these disks work fine in first drive.  But focusing on one issue at a time ^^'

[Neshek]

Normally max partition size is 1gb.  With the special driver installed, you can do 2gbs partitions.  And either way, you can only have 2 partitions per device.  Note you can make as many partitions as you want, but only 2 can be available at the same time.  If you attempt to have 3 or more available at once, HDD will be unreadable and you'll have boot from floppy.  If you want 4 active partitions, you must use 2 separate HDDs.

I've read that so i was ready to have my 2 950mb partitions. I thought that would be more than enough so no need for goverhd but i can't get there yet :/

[SuperDeadite]

Wait, so from my understanding, you have a SASI based computer with a SCSI I/O board installed, correct?
In this case why are you using SxSI?   SxSI is for directly connecting a SCSI device to the SASI port.
With a real SCSI card installed, just use a normal Human system disk and run format.x...

[Neshek]

Wait, so from my understanding, you have a SASI based computer with a SCSI I/O board installed, correct?
In this case why are you using SxSI?   SxSI is for directly connecting a SCSI device to the SASI port.
With a real SCSI card installed, just use a normal Human system disk and run format.x...

Correct. Old x68000 CZ-600C.
Think i already tried to rem devices related to sxsi in the config.sys once but maybe i was still playing with jumpers. Gotta try this again tonight. For now low level formatted the drive on the PC to make sure it's ok. Took ages but it's fine.

[Neshek]

Got rid of sxsi devices again then drive appeared but corrupted as usual.
Then after the low level format on the PC, and a lengthy initialization process on the x68000, it worked!
Maybe those sxsi devices interfered and corrupted the disk?
Well it was strange experience nonetheless

Now i have to make partitions to be sure. Which is taking ages. Please guys, confirm it's normal that partitioning is so slow

If partitioning is ok, next work is putting Eidis image on the real stuff ^^ Then Fun time

[Neshek]

Ok.
Initializing once more. Partitioning took no time.
Then things got messy again, somehow corrupted and refused to boot.
So i tried again, disabling additional partitions, rebooted, checked c: and d: were available, copyall a:*.* c:, Switch setting boot to SCSI0, HD_Max is set to 1 (No idea iif it has an impact) and it worked.
I guess the key here is to have only 2 enabled partitions at one time?

Ok now i'll have to make an image and start transferring games ^^

[SuperDeadite]

Yes.  You can only have 2 available partitions per device, or device becomes unreadable.  This is known limitation.

[Neshek]

Yes.  You can only have 2 available partitions per device, or device becomes unreadable.  This is known limitation.

I had the silly thought it would take into account the 2 first enabled partitions only and ignore the rest enabled or not.

Anyway thanks a lot for your support